Larry Ellison envisions a surveillance state in which techbros rule. '“Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,” Ellison said in an hour-long Q&A during Oracle’s Financial Analyst Meeting last week.'

Today, I was laid off from Cascade PBS along with my entire team and most of the newsroom. I'll have more to say, but I have loved my time as news editor alongside some of the best journalists I have ever worked with. Every time a newsroom closes, stories go with it. The silence that follows is loud

All mayors seek political advice, but Mayor Bruce Harrell had his campaign strategist on a city funded contract for the first 3 years of his term, a legal but “strange” and “different” arrangement. W/ @jimbrunner.bsky.social www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

The GENIUS Act barred stablecoin issuers from paying interest. But in allowing cryptocurrency exchanges to offer rewards, it set off a high-stakes clash with the US banking industry. www.wired.com/story/genius...

46 Seattle journalists and media workers have now signed onto our open letter condemning Israel's killings of Palestinian journalists in Gaza and calling for their protection

ah, very exciting

For @wired.com, I covered the fundraise of Erebor Bank, the “pay to play” regulatory landscape allegedly taking shape, and its potential implications for banking writ large

going to keep saying: a society that would like to maintain its basic functions has really got to discourage baldfaced lying, especially by people in positions of authority

notable that the WHPC still hasn't taken this step in response to the unlawful barring of the Associated Press from events.

“total rethinks of education” is how we got here. Maybe we need less rethinking it and more doing it.

yes, ChatGPT is in schools; there are K-12 school districts and DOEs entering into AI contracts, too. so rather than panicking over the death of academia as a foregone conclusion—particularly when LLMs are frequently wrong—why don't we talk about the climate costs of AI? my latest @teenvogue.com

BREAKING: The World Food Program says its food stocks in Gaza have run out under Israel’s nearly 8-week-old blockade, ending a main source of sustenance for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the territory.

This should be the top story in Axios’s morning read. But it isn’t. It’s the FIFTH top story. @axios.com www.axios.com/2025/04/23/t...

The government being down with subscription military tech is an advanced state of oligarchy.

Correct

Today we're publishing a monster feature that dives deep into the initial six weeks over Elon Musk's government takeover. Our entire newsroom came together to help make this story happen. Read this culmination of our blood, sweat, and tears:

Then the mayor says the following, re: Khalil: "What I'm finding surprising is the level of support you're all displaying, but I didn't see that support for me"

"The choice of victim is extremely strategic. Defending Khalil invokes political costs they don’t believe either Columbia University or the Democrats are willing to incur. So far, they are correct."

Buckle up

Atlanta Fed's Q1 growth forecast slipped last week from 2.3% to -1.5%. It's down to -2.8% as of this morning.

This morning, Seattle’s paper of record published an op-ed claiming that trans kids’ participation in WA girls sports “gives boys access to girls teams and locker rooms” and tells “all of our young female athletes that boys are more important than they are.”

A few days late to this but CFPB now has a tip line (on X, of course) for people to complain if agency employees are still doing their jobs. HuffPost confirmed it was legit.

DOGE has left the Hanford nuclear cleanup site with a “skeleton crew,” according to Sen. Patty Murray. The Bonneville Power Administration is also in DOGE’s crosshairs, which may affect energy reliability and costs in the PNW. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

I'm hearing now that *every* technologist CFPB hired to investigate Big Tech was fired this evening. That's somewhere between 70-100 people. wired.com/story/dozens-of-cfpb-workers-terminated-in-after-hours-firing-blitz/

We won!!!!!!!

New @cascadepbsnewsroom.bsky.social, Seattle businesses including Microsoft & Amazon have spent more than $500K to oppose a new tax to fund social housing that's going before voters on Feb. 11. A new poll found voters are nearly evenly split between Prop 1A & 1B www.cascadepbs.org/briefs/2025/...

So much attention has been paid to Elon's college-age DOGE bros. But @propublica.org's roundup of 20+ members of Musk's demolition crew shows that it's largely comprised of alleged adults, including Katie Miller (wife of Trump whisperer Stephen Miller) projects.propublica.org/elon-musk-do...

The South Seattle Emerald welcomes Florangela Davila as its new Executive Director, succeeding Michael McPhearson. A longtime journalist and newsroom leader, she brings a deep commitment to community storytelling and equity. Read more here: https://soseaem.org/4hFjmFZ #SeattleNews

I wrote about Musk and this bureaucratic coup as plainly as I could. There's reporting in here & the particulars are overwhelming but what's happening is so clear: He's not trying to run the federal govt like a software company He's trying to turn it into a political weapon. (gift link)

For Seattle Met, I profiled Seattle's youngest councilmember, @alexis4seattle.bsky.social, who received the most votes for any Seattle politician ever. (feat. @washingtonbus.org) www.seattlemet.com/news-and-cit...

"where are all the protests?" read our series showing the legacy of both the Trump and Biden admins—from BLM in the 2010s, to Standing Rock, to George Floyd, to the Palestine encampments—as protest suppression and criminalization. politicians want to call blocking traffic and masking "terrorism."

Wrote about Bluesky, its pseudo-headquarters in Seattle, and its struggles to align a decentralized ethos with user expectations and VC-driven imperatives. (incl. @quinnae.com and @cfiesler.bsky.social) www.cascadepbs.org/news/2025/01...

memories

I said this a year ago elsewhere, but I’ll say it again here: It's impossible to overstate how much the big tech CEOs & VCs are being radicalized within their bubble. The level of paranoia & contrived victimization is off the charts, and they increasingly only consume media that they have funded.

Crazy how beavers build these

Every great work has its cheap imitations

I am tiresome on this point: a lot of the businesses that are collapsing these days (including many retail chains and media outlets) can sustain themselves but they can't sustain themselves AND make investors rich

They don’t get into it in this (great) story but one thing it is important to know is that modern conservative Christian homeschooling has its roots in Massive Resistance and the backlash to desegregation.

thinking about the throughlines btwn anti-trans laws like those passed in TX, anti-abortion laws, as well as war-on-drugs 4.0 laws passed in “liberal” states like WA. white Christian nationalism and derision of nonviolent medical/tech interventions (from abortions to methodone) at their core

ngl a lil nervous that only one of these is labeled impersonation

Ghastly developments from the WA state leg rn— A push under the guise of bipartisanship and “compromise” to criminalize drug possession and let local govts effectively shutter harm-reduction programs + sites as they see fit: https://shorturl.at/qMQY4

this is my creation myth

Naomi Klein: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/08/ai-machines-hallucinating-naomi-klein

how would *you* euthanize the geico gecko?

They’re trying to redefine generational wealth lol